Jerusalem: Coin of 'Jonathan the King' (Alexander Jannaeus)
A typical coin struck by the Hasmonaean (Maccabean) king Alexander Jannaeus (ruled from 103-76 BCE). The symbol on the left is an anchor and the symbol on the right is a lily flower, which was a symbol for Jerusalem. The inscription around the anchor is in Greek, whereas the inscription on the other side, around the flower is in Hebrew, written in the ancient Iron Age script. Jannaeus is referring to himself with the title "King." All of the other Hasmonaean rulers called themselves 'High Priest' instead of "King." The coin reflects both the process of hellenization and the effort of the Hasmonaeans to maintain strong ties with the ancient ethos of Israel.
This photograph shows the outside of Cave 1, which, according to the common story, is what the two Bedouin shepherd boys saw and threw a rock into, hoping to find a lost goat. Instead, they heard the crash of broken pottery and found the first of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
This photograph shows the inside of Cave 1, the first of 11 Judaean Desert caves that were found to contain the Dead Sea Scrolls. Seven intact scrolls came from this cave, including the two oldest copies of the book of Isaiah (they date to the late 2nd century BCE; the next-earliest complete copy dates to the 10th century CE), a previously unknown work that embellished or commented on biblical books (called the 'Genesis Apocryphon'), and four sectarian writings (i.e., books written by a Jewish sect, probably the Qumran <span class="tooltip" title=' A sect of Jews from the Second Temple period.who lived in many cities in the ancient world. However, t They are best known from the desert settlement of Qumran, which is nearand the nearby the caves in which the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. As a result, it is believed commonly held that the Dead Sea Scrolls were written by the particular subset ofthe Essenes who lived at Qumran between 150 BCE and 68 CE. Further Reading '>Essenes - the Habakkuk Commentary, the Manual of Discipline, the Thanksgiving Scroll, and the War Scroll).
This photograph shows what one of the Dead Sea Scrolls looked like when it was found (before it was unrolled). Though a scroll in this state is much easier to deal with than others that were broken into thousands of fragments, the 2,000 year-old state of the animal skin on which the text was written was extremely dry and fragile. They must be humidified and slowly unrolled over time. Often times insects had bored through them or the animal skin had stuck to itself in clumps. This scroll was 9.3 feet long when unrolled.
Palestine During the Reign of the Hasmonaeans: Map
This map shows the expansion of the Hasmonaean kingdom in the period between 160 and 76 BCE. The capital of the kingdom was always in Judaea, colored light blue. The Hasmonaean ruler Jonathan (160-142 BCE) added the yellow portions; his brother Simon (142-134 BCE) added the red portions; Simon's son, Hyrcanus I (134-104 BCE) added the light blue portions outside of Judaea; Hyrcanus's son, Aristobulus I (104-103 BCE) added the dark purple regions in Galilee; and Aristobulus' brother, Alexander Jannaeus (103-76 BCE), who expanded the kingdom to its greatest extent (the red line), added the light purple areas.
The Great Isaiah Scroll is one of the largest and best-preserved scrolls from the Dead Sea Scrolls and was probably produced around 100 BCE. The entire cache of Dead Sea Scrolls, which were initially found by some Bedouin in caves near the Dead Sea in 1947, were probably hidden by people living in the settlement of Qumran during the Jewish War against the Romans around 70 CE. This particular scroll preserves the text of the biblical book of Isaiah and is one long scroll that was constructed of 17 sheets of carefully prepared leather sewn together with linen thread. It measures 23.5 feet in length. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls was one of the most important discoveries ever, not least because it is roughly 1,000 years older than any previously-known Hebrew text of Isaiah.
There are a few monumental tombs outside and below the southeast corner of the Old City of Jerusalem, in the Jehoshaphat Valley. The one in this picture is known anachronistically as the Tomb of Absalom (Absalom was the biblical son of David who lived and died nearly 1,000 years before this tomb was built). The structure consists of a tomb below and a monument on top that combines several different styles typical of the Late Hellenistic period. The square base was carved out of the bedrock and has column bases and capitals of the Greek Ionic style, but the decoration of triglyphs and rosette metopes above the capital are borrowed from Doric style Greek buildings, and the concave cornice on top comes from Egypt. The combination of features in this building have no exact parallel among other known structures, and its date of construction is unknown, but probably dates to the 1st century BCE or the 1st century CE.
This photograph shows the walls of the western side of the Old City of Jerusalem. The prominent portion of this wall was built by the Ottomans in the 16th century; however, significant parts of the wall, especially the lower layers, are from the days of the Jewish King Herod (1st century BCE). Several courses of a substantial stone wall built on bedrock and running beneath the walls of the Herodian and later periods dates to the days of the Hasmonaean kings (late 2nd-early 1st centuries BCE). This lower wall, in conjunction with information from other excavations, confirms that the city walls extended to their present western limits at least by the time of the Hasmonaean kings.
Jerusalem: Inscription from the Tomb of Matthias
This inscription was discovered in a tomb in a northern suburb of modern Jerusalem. It is written in Aramaic, a common language of the Second Temple period, but the script, called Paleo-Hebrew, is like the one that was used hundreds of years earlier, which is very unusual. The inscription reads, 'I Abba, son of the priest E/leazar, son of Aaron the high [priest], I, / Abba, the oppressed and the persec/uted, who was born in Jerusalem,/ and went into exile in Babylonia and brought [back to Jerusalem] Mattath/iah son of Juda[h], and I buried him in the c/ave, which I acquired by writ.' The remains of an old woman who had been beheaded were buried in the ossuary.
This photograph shows what the limestone cliffs in the region around Qumran look like, which makes it easier to understand how the Dead Sea Scrolls could have been hidden for nearly 2,000 years without being discovered. Cave 1 is in the upper left of the picture, just beneath the top of the cliff face.
The jars in this picture are the same type of jar inside of which the scrolls from Cave 1 were found. Its unusual shape suggests that it may have been made specifically for storing scrolls. The same sort of pottery, as well as a potter's kiln, were discovered in the Qumran settlement, creating another link between the inhabitants of the settlement and the Dead Sea Scrolls themselves.
Jerusalem: Bedouin discoverers of Cave 1
The two men in this photograph, Jum'a Muhammed (on the left) and Muhammed edh-Dhib (on the right) are the two Ta'amireh Bedouin cousins who claim to have discovered the first Dead Sea Scrolls in Cave 1 in 1947. Details of the discovery differ, but the story goes that they were out shepherding their flock, saw a cave above them, threw a rock into the cave, and heard something break. Upon further investigation they found scrolls and carried three of them back to camp. They discovered four more scrolls in the cave in the following weeks. No other cave yielded as many complete scrolls, and only one other cave (Cave 11) yielded any complete scrolls.
Jerusalem: Temple Mount - Greek inscription
This fragment of a Greek inscription inscribed in stone is one of several large stone notices that were erected around the Temple precinct entrances in the Second Temple Period. A complete version of the same text was found in the 19th century, and it is a 'keep out' sign that warns Gentiles (i.e., non-Jews) that they may not proceed beyond the entrance point at the risk of death.
After the Dead Sea Scrolls from Cave 1 were found by the Bedouin and taken to Bethlehem, they ended up in front of Eleazar Sukenik, a professor and archaeologist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who is the man in this picture. He was the first scholar to see them, and he did so across a barbed wire barricade separating Jewish and Arab sectors in the Old City during the last days of the British mandate over Palestine in 1948. He immediately recognized their importance and was able to procure three scrolls -the War Scroll, the Thanksgiving Psalms Scroll, and the second of two Isaiah scrolls (aka "1QIsaiah B").
The light colored, curved shape on the left in this photograph is the roof the Shrine of the Book, a building within the Israel Museum in Jerusalem that houses the Dead Sea Scrolls. The roof was designed to look like the lid of one of the jars inside of which many of the scrolls were found. Many of the scrolls and artifacts found at Qumran are displayed in the exhibition that is inside the building.
This aerial photograph shows the settlement of Qumran, which is located in the Judaean Desert, which is probably where a group of people known as the <span class="tooltip" title=' A sect of Jews from the Second Temple period.who lived in many cities in the ancient world. However, t They are best known from the desert settlement of Qumran, which is nearand the nearby the caves in which the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. As a result, it is believed commonly held that the Dead Sea Scrolls were written by the particular subset ofthe Essenes who lived at Qumran between 150 BCE and 68 CE. Further Reading '>Essenes lived between ca. 150 BCE and 72/73 CE. Most scholars think that the people who lived here wrote and/or copied the Dead Sea Scrolls. The photo shows not just the settlement of Qumran but also the marl terrace (behind it), where Caves 4 and 5 were located. A total of 11 caves that contained scrolls were found by Bedouin and archaeologists in the 1940s-1950s. The settlement's proximity to these two caves constitutes one of the major pieces of evidence for the connection between the Qumran inhabitants and the Dead Sea Scrolls.
This photograph shows the marl terraces of Qumran, upon which the ancient settlement was built. The Qumran Caves 4 and 5 are pictured near the center of the image. The wadi (dry riverbed) flows with water after fresh rains. The Dead Sea is visible in the background.
This photograph of the Qumran settlement, taken from a nearby cave, shows the marl terrace where caves 4 and 5 were found, the settlement, and the Dead Sea in the background.
Samaria Sabaste: Hellenistic Round Tower
This round stone tower dates to the Early Hellenistic period and was part of the defenses of the city of Samaria, which is located in the central and northern parts of the Central Hill. It is possible that this tower is evidence of the Greek occupation of the city at the time of Alexander the Great, as this style of tower had been used in Greece in the previous century and it became increasingly popular in later periods.
The first of the Dead Sea Scrolls were found by Bedouin in 1947 in the Judaean Desert, who took them to an antiquities dealer in Bethlehem named Kando. Kando took four of the scrolls to St. Mark's Monastery in the Old City of Jerusalem, where he showed them to the spiritual leader of the Jacobite Syrian Christians in Jerusalem, Metropolitan (Archbishop) Mar Athanasius Yeshue Samuel, who is the man in this picture. Metropolitan Samuel purchased the scrolls from Kando for about $97.